Wednesday, October 7, 2015

NFL 2015: SBPI through Week Four

Our first quarterly installment of the NFL SBPI (SportsBoss
Power Index) comes after Week Four, when all but two teams (NE & TEN) have
played 4 games this season.

SBPI: max grade 160: 80 on offense & 80 on defense,
which can be achieved by receiving a perfect grade of “5” in each of the 16 different
statistics tracked on both sides of the ball:

OFFENSE

DEFENSE

TOTAL
TEAM

Blended

Wins

Rating

Rank

Rating

Rank

Rating

Rank

SOS

TOM

3

ARI

57.9

2

43.3

5

101.1

1

31

0

4

GB

57.3

4

42.3

7

99.5

2

26

4

3

NYJ

47.0

9

48.6

2

95.6

3

32

6

4

CIN

59.5

1

35.1

19

94.6

4

18

3

1

TEN

48.8

6

43.5

4

92.3

5

23

(2)

3

NE

57.5

3

34.0

22

91.5

6

12

3

2

SEA

46.1

12

44.1

3

90.3

7

26

(1)

4

ATL

56.1

5

33.3

24

89.4

8

22

6

2

WAS

44.9

14

42.6

6

87.5

9

28

(4)

2

BUF

47.9

8

38.8

10

86.6

10

20

4

4

CAR

43.5

16

41.1

8

84.6

11

30

8

2

SD

48.3

7

35.8

16

84.0

12

24

(2)

4

DEN

33.3

28

49.9

1

83.1

13

29

5

2

PIT

45.8

13

36.6

14

82.4

14

19

2

2

DAL

46.3

11

35.6

17

81.9

15

17

(3)

2

NYG

44.4

15

36.5

15

80.9

16

6

6

1

BAL

41.0

20

39.0

9

80.0

17

8

(3)

2

MIN

43.4

17

35.3

18

78.6

18

27

4

1

NO

46.9

10

29.3

31

76.1

19

13

(3)

1

KC

41.8

19

33.0

25

74.8

20

5

(4)

2

OAK

43.1

18

31.0

28

74.1

21

22

1

1

HOU

36.9

24

36.8

13

73.6

22

14

(6)

1

JAC

35.9

26

37.5

12

73.4

23

15

(1)

2

STL

37.9

22

34.0

22

71.9

24

2

2

1

PHI

33.0

30

38.8

10

71.8

25

4

1

2

IND

36.5

25

34.6

20

71.1

26

10

(9)

1

CHI

37.8

23

31.4

26

69.1

27

1

(2)

1

TB

34.0

27

34.5

21

68.5

28

17

(4)

1

CLE

38.6

21

28.9

32

67.5

29

7

(3)

1

SF

32.6

31

31.3

27

63.9

30

4

(5)

1

MIA

33.3

28

29.8

29

63.0

31

11

(3)

0

DET

30.6

32

29.8

29

60.4

32

10

0

·The Arizona Cardinals have the pole position
through the first quarter of the season posting an average game grade of 101.1
– which is a very high mark.Last season
my first posting of the SBPI came after Week 5 and the top team was the Seattle
Seahawks, who had a grade of 97.3, and were the only team whose grade was above
91.6; this year we have five teams with a minimum grade of such (ARI, GB, NYJ,
CIN, TEN) with a 6th, NE, checking in at 91.5.

·Arizona has played to grades of 103, 96, 126, 81
through each of their first four games, respectively.They are one of only four teams (ARI, GB,
NYJ, CIN) who have out-graded their opponent in each game this season.They are well balanced to this point in the
season, and are not buoyed by a large & favorable TOM (0 for the season) –
which should bode well moving forward.Their schedule has been weak to date, but they will be tested more as
the season progresses.The Cardinals
were playing well last season before QB Carson Palmer went down; if he can stay
healthy this season they will certainly be a factor in the NFC.

·The NY Jets check in as the top AFC squad to
this point, which is quite a surprise.Turnover margin has played a big factor for the Jets this season: last
year through Week Five they were a (7), worst in the NFL – in 2015 they are a
+6, tied for 2nd best in the NFL.Turnovers continue to be a massive factor in the outcome of NFL games;
but how sustainable is that success model?Not very, especially considering the Jets rank just 13th in
passing offense (the 2nd biggest factor), which was accumulated
facing the weakest schedule of opponent pass defense.

·Tennessee, led by rookie QB Marcus Mariota,
checks in at #5 surprisingly.The Titans
did not play in Week Four, and have been dropping in game grades weekly: the
opened with a 115, fell to an 85 in Wk2, bottoming out at 78 in Wk3 – not the
trend you want to see, but it’s somewhat expected with a young team &
QB.I am not buying the Titans just yet
and they may be a tad overrated by the folks in Vegas the next couple of weeks.

·Many of the usual suspects, playoff teams in
both conferences fill out the rest of the top 8 including GB, CIN, NE, SEA,
ATL.

·Teams rated 12th to 17th
are an interesting group, let’s do one quick bullet on each:

o#12 San Diego: lost couple tough road games, we
will know more about the Chargers chances as they head into their Wk10 bye.

o#13 Denver: great to start 4-0 lead by the #1
defense in the NFL; but the offense has to be a concern especially as the
season progresses and Peyton Manning puts more mileage (and takes more hits
than usual) on his body.

o#14 Pittsburgh: have to find a way to get
through the next few weeks without Big Ben; last week’s blown lead to Ravens is
going to sting for a while.

o#15 Dallas: like Pitt the Cowboys must find a
way to battle through a weak NFC East for next 6-8 weeks without Tony Romo – it
won’t be easy, but nobody in that division is going to run away and hide.

o#16 NY Giants: blowing that lead at Dallas could
be a death blow although they got lucky with Dallas losing Romo for extended
period of time & Philly not figuring anything out to date.

o#17 Baltimore: needed that win over Steelers
badly to keep playoff hopes alive; seemingly playing for a Wild Card after already
losing at home to Bengals.

·Teams 24th to 26th (STL,
PHI, IND) were many experts’ selections to have strong “sleeper” type seasons,
win their division and/or make a run come January – all three clearly have
their work cut of for them although the latter two play in such weak divisions
they won’t lose a ton of ground as they try and figure things out.

·The bottom three (SF, MIA, DET) are a certain
surprise to almost everyone I would imagine.We all expected SF to take a step back (or two steps) but so far it’s
not been pretty on either side of the ball.The Dolphins already made a coaching change but still seriously lack
leadership on both sides of the football; they are clearly not going to beat
out New England for the AFC East crown so they are relegated to playing for the
Wild Card in a tough, deep AFC.The Lions
are a surprising disaster – according to SBPI they rank 32nd on
offense & 29th on defense – and with a 0 TOM (they are the only
team of the bottom 7 that doesn’t suffer from a negative TOM) it isn’t looking
pretty in Detroit for the 2015 campaign.

Next up let’s examine the divisional ratings:

Rating

NFL

AE

50

1

NW

62

2

AN

64

3

NE

65

4

AW

66

5

NS

66

5

AS

76

7

NN

79

8

The AFC East is by FAR & AWAY the strongest division in
football right now even with the Dolphins checking in at 31st!With the Jets at 3rd, Patriots at
6th & Bills 10th they have three of the top ten teams
in the NFL – though the ratings are relatively fluid & I would expect the
Jets to drop a modest amount, the Bills to drop slightly and the Dolphins to
rise up over the next month plus of action.Divisions ranked #2 to #6 are very closely grouped and will change by
the week; the worst two divisions in football are the AFC South & NFC
North.The AFC South should only get
worse as I expect the Titans to fall more than the Colts rise in the coming
weeks; the NFC North should generally improve as the Lions rise from the bottom
of the NFL pack.

Next up,
here are my projected standings after Wk4. As a reminder, this
process involves playing out the entire season based on my power ratings for
each team. For more information on this topic and process, and to
see how accurate this exercise has been in the past, please read my blog entry
from July 31, 2012:

AFC East

Wins

Loss

NFC East

Wins

Loss

NE

11.60

4.40

DAL

8.41

7.59

NYJ

8.97

7.03

NYG

8.18

7.82

BUF

7.95

8.05

WAS

7.95

8.05

MIA

6.05

9.95

PHI

7.14

8.86

AFC North

NFC North

CIN

10.55

5.45

GB

12.01

3.99

PIT

8.22

7.78

MIN

7.02

8.98

BAL

7.14

8.87

CHI

6.40

9.60

CLE

5.63

10.37

DET

6.19

9.81

AFC South

NFC South

IND

8.82

7.19

ATL

10.63

5.37

HOU

6.65

9.35

CAR

9.79

6.21

TEN

6.56

9.44

NO

6.72

9.28

JAC

6.38

9.63

TB

5.14

10.86

AFC West

NFC West

DEN

10.78

5.22

SEA

10.03

5.97

SD

8.33

7.67

ARI

9.09

6.91

KC

7.15

8.85

STL

7.60

8.40

OAK

7.05

8.95

SF

5.85

10.15

Playoffs

Playoffs

#6 SD @ #3 CIN

#6 ARI @ #3 SEA

#5 NYJ @ #4 IND

#5 CAR @ #4 DAL

#1 NE

#1 GB

#2 DEN

#2 ATL

Teams highlighted in green are division winners while the
four yellow teams are projected to be Wild Card squads.In last year’s first projection posted here
on my blog after Wk5 of action this exercise nailed 5 of 6 playoff teams in the
AFC & NFC (so 10 of the 12 playoff teams in total).

Last
analysis for this week (I will post each week just like the standings above) is
my power rankings. My rankings are comprised of a pair of numbers:
one measures team performance in my performance ratings (discussed in the
opener of this entry); two measures team performance vs. the
spread. These two ratings are weighted and combined for my official
power rankings. For my blog I will only provide the order of the
teams, not the actual power ranking as that is for my eyes only because it is
used in my weekly handicapping process as potential model plays:

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